LoL Worlds 2024: G2-BLG, To Believe Again

G2 Esports and Bilibili Gaming's ambitions are clear: win the Worlds trophy. However, one of these teams will be eliminated from Worlds 2024 contention this Sunday — before even reaching the playoffs. Today, with six teams remaining and three spots left for the quarter-finals, the Swiss Stage of the prestigious tournament will end this Sunday. Only one of the 11 teams remaining will claim the title of League of Legends Season 14 World Champion, and Sheep Esports is here to break down each day's key matchup.

What better time to believe? On paper, G2 are indeed the underdog. Even though the LEC champion won every title domestically this year, BLG did the same but in a stronger region — and, while G2 fell to fourth place at MSI, BLG went all the way to the Grand Finals and lost to Gen.G (1-3). Even worse this summer, when the LEC powerhouse seemed weaker than ever and struggled to win its final trophies, Bilibili Gaming was crushing one of the two most competitive leagues in the world by losing only one game in playoffs (9-1).

But in order to win Worlds with this format, you don't need to be the best team in the world all year long. You just need to be the best on the day. BLG is not 2-2 for no reason. Time flew, and based on the teams' shapes coming into this last round, the match seems much fairer than it may have once seemed. The LPL champions have been struggling so much since Worlds started that they had to change one of their players in the middle of the competition, substituting sixth man jungler Peng "Xun" Li-Xun for Yan "Wei" Yang-Wei. A sign of weakness compounded by a confusing performance against PSG Talon.

During the first game of this BO3, the PCS champion was in the driver's seat from the early to mid-game — 7k gold ahead and three dragons to none at 28 min — and even in the second one, by being only 1k gold behind at 20min with a scaling Smolder in their comp. Two issues prevented them from converting these games to wins: their team fight approaches and Chen "Bin" Ze-Bin's Jax.

While Sergen "BrokenBlade" Çelik has also shown some priority on Jax against T1, he wasn't nearly as decisive as his Chinese counterpart. But the pick should still be contested either to be banned or picked during the BO3. G2 came back from a gold deficit against the World champions through their team fighting, so they should do better than PSG in that department. But they will have to put some pressure in the early game against the LPL champion, who seems a bit lost during this phase. Nonetheless, the LEC champion also hasn't had clean early games at Worlds, save for their match against WBG.

Both teams also share a common burden within their teams: their supports. If Mihael "Mikyx" Mehle and Luo "ON" Wen-Jun deserve credit for their team's success these past two years, it has to be noted that they are coming in this tournament in their worst shape. As highlighted by Sheep Stats, they're so far the two players with the most deaths of Worlds' Swiss Stage and they are also among the worst KDAs of all supports (#16 for Mikyx and #13 for ON).

Even if G2 didn't have the easiest run in the Swiss Stage — cf. Subtitle — it would be disappointing to see the biggest Western hope fall again before playoffs, especially since Worlds is on their home soil this year. The Samurai not only have the opportunity to keep the hope alive for European fans, but they can also redeem themselves for last year with this match. Indeed, the LEC champion lost to BLG with the same stakes at Worlds 2023's Swiss Stage (2-1), also in a do-or-die series.

Only one player has moved from the two rosters since then: Zeng "Yagao" Qi replaced by Zhuo "knight" Ding on the side of Bilibili Gaming. If this addition has been confirmed as a real upgrade for the Chinese team throughout the year, G2 can complete a vengeance by the book if they achieve the feat this Sunday.

This BO3 will be the baptism of fire for one of these teams. Both will have to beat one of the best in this Swiss Stage's sixth round to progress to the Knockout Stage. As none of the players from G2 and BLG have ever won a world championship, the team that comes out on top might be granted the weapons to believe harder than ever in their common dream: being crowned World champion in London on November 2. Catch all the action this Saturday after DK - WBG, at around 5 PM CET.